Fathers

The thing I liked most about practicing tax law in San Francisco was the run-up to Christmas. Within the struggle to meet year-end deadlines, there was the refined task of selecting greeting cards to send to clients. There were numerous art reproductions to choose from, all on high-grade paper stock. Choice was more restricted for self-adhesive postage stamps.

Among art reproductions, I chose soft, secular winter scenes, like Monet’s Snow near Honfleur or Sisley’s Snow Effect in Louveciennes. For postage stamps, I usually avoided religious iconography. On occasion however, I selected that year’s nativity scene from a Renaissance or Baroque master.  When necessary, to steer clear of any suggestion of vital religious sentiment, I settled for a traditional yuletide still life, such as poinsettia, or something from Norman Rockwell. Nothing Hannukah or Kwanza ever. Those celebrations may have been central to other people, but they had no place in the persona I presented to clients, nothing exotic, nothing from Africa or the Middle East.

I like to think that, over the years, I had improved my Christmas communications. I imagined the tickle of suspense clients must have enjoyed in wondering what they would receive from me. I was sure my cards played a positive, though perhaps peripheral role in their lives, a role less significant than the excellent legal representation I provided at reasonable rates. But delight in this undertaking--the Christmas communications, not selling my services cheap--withered under widespread disapproval of physical greeting cards and postage stamps. With little warning, the activity I most enjoyed was rejected as a waste of time and other resources. My head still spins over the speed at which this condemnation triumphed. With little warning, lawyers started sending impersonal emails with insincere statements about “taking time to remember those who have contributed to our success.”  Really, whose time and how much of it was consumed in compiling e-mail addresses? Certainly not any lawyer’s time.

Bucking this barren digital trend, I continued to select and send beautiful cards with personal hand-written notes, some revisiting the struggles and triumphs a client and I had shared: “Dear Bob, there’s no denying our close calls with the permissible disparity requirements in your money purchase pension plan. Though we struggled during the initial audit, we prevailed on appeal. We can’t choose the revenue agents assigned to our cases, and we can’t predict how much time their stupidity or intransigence will consume. We have chosen, nonetheless, to eat an enormous chunk of our fees because of your loyalty to our firm. Please pay the balance by year end, so you can deduct it when filing your taxes for this year.”

Just kidding about referring to fees in a Christmas card, though there was never a time of year when money was far from my thoughts. I had an ex-wife and two children to support. And I was supporting them in a milieu of increasingly bold father-bashing.  The media had seldom presented fathers in a favorable light. For most of my youth, fathers were well-intentioned but inept. By the time I became a father, movies were promoting a moral universe in which men were so toxic that their children would have benefited from abandonment.  Abuse by a father could seldom be so extreme that a child, certainly a boy child, would be better off without him. His presence alone, no matter how bitter, opens a path to the boy’s happiness.

For example, I hated my father, and he hated me. As the adult in the relationship, he was responsible for introducing the poison between us. It was the poison of disappointment. He wanted an athletic son or at least an energetic one. He wanted someone who was good with his hands and eager for opportunities to apply his skills. He wanted someone whom everyone would like. I was not that person. I was fat and hated physical exertion. I spent most of my time indoors, alone, reading.

“You need to put down that book and go outside,” my father’s recurring advice. That particular afternoon he followed up with one of his favorite injunctions. “You need to start shoveling snow.”

I pulled the curtain back from the window next to my desk. The blizzard was fierce.  “You want to send a child into that.”

“I don’t want to,” my father said, “but I have to. Someone needs to start shoveling the walkway before it freezes, and I’m not strong enough to do that anymore.”

“Why not?” I said. He was old and very thin. He had destroyed his health working in anthracite collieries to keep clothes on our backs, food on the table and a roof over our heads. My mother and my older sister had often reminded me of his sacrifice, so often that I almost began to believe it. Then in adolescence I realized I had not asked him to do any of that. Providing for his family may have made him feel virtuous, but why should I pay for his sense of duty? Worst of all, he had little to show for work that had ruined life for all of us.

“I’m not that much stronger than you are,” I said, “You just got back from White Haven. Your lungs are always better after therapy there; and you’re closer to the cellar stairs where we keep the tools.” I knew this would set him off. He started blustering additional orders.

“And shovel the front walks for the widows on the street.”

“All our neighbors are widows,” I said. “They never give me money for the chores you make me do for them. Let’s wait until they knock on our front door and offer to pay.”

“They won’t be able to reach our front door if you don’t shovel the sidewalks. Go outside and get started.”

“Let me finish this chapter first.”

“You said that half an hour ago.”

“I’m a slow reader,” I said. “I’ve got to return the book to the library soon, or we’ll have to pay a fine.”

“You won’t be able to get to the library to return the book if you don’t shovel the walks.”

“And the librarian won’t be able to get to our house to collect the fine. It’s a win-win,” I said; but he disagreed and resorted to ad hominem abuse.

“Are you afraid you’ll freeze to death or that the wind will blow you away? With all the blubber you carry, you needn’t be. Now, put down the book, get out of that chair, and go shovel the walk.”

‘I can’t,” I said. “The librarian warned me that the book’s a page-turner and that I won’t be able to put it down.”

“Then I’ll do it for you,” he said and wrenched the book from my hands. The effort triggered a spasm of coughing with desperate gasping for air. The respiratory treatments at White Haven were less successful than before.

Outside, the storm continued to rage. The street and walkways were covered with snow. And the snow was covered with soot, as always occurs in coal mining towns. Wind had knocked over the privy of the widow next door. The hole in its roof had sunk partially into the snow. It looked like the opening of a doghouse. The widow was straining to climb out and calling for help. It could have been a detail from an Impressionist canvas, or one from Brueghel.  But it would never make a Christmas card to send to clients.

Refining a boy’s taste is one back-handed benefit a father can deliver. But that was nothing compared to what he gave me the following summer.  It was Sunday morning and, instead of going to church, our parents drove us to Sans Souci amusement park. It was my sister who had wanted to go there. She was a daredevil and wanted to try the dangerous rides. She lived for chances to scream at the top of her lungs.  My father was interested in the swimming pool. He had just undergone a new treatment at White Haven and felt his lungs were ready for any challenge. I was not interested in any of that stuff; neither was my mother. That was why she crowded around me when she was not standing in line with my sister for the roller coasters or Ferris wheels.

Around lunc time, my father took a break from the pool and joined us for the cold lunch of breaded fried chicken, cole slaw, and potato salad my mother had prepared. It might have been a nice meal if my father had stopped hectoring me about being too afraid to go on rides or try swimming in the pool.

“Are you made of sugar?” he said. “Are you afraid to dissolve in water.”

“He doesn’t know how to swim,” mother said.

“This is a chance to learn,” father said. “I’ll be there to make sure he doesn’t drown.” I was less certain about my father’s intentions.

“I don’t want to go swimming either,” my sister said. “I want to go back on the rides.”

“I’ll just walk around and see the attractions,” I said. “Maybe there’s a book stall.”

“Don’t wander off too far,” my mother said. “Don’t lose sight of me.”

The afternoon was hot and boring. Carnival broadsides could not hold my interest; and there was no money for cotton candy or caramel corn. Then around 3:00, clouds covered the sky, and it began to rain, first a drizzle, then torrents. The rides had stopped, so my sister huddled with mother and me under the roof of an exotic attraction with an agethreshold for entry. “Hootchie Cootchie,” my father would have called it.

“We need to leave.” my mother said. “Go find your father. If he doesn’t get out of this rain, he’ll catch pneumonia.”

“Can’t we leave without him,” I said.

She looked at me in horror. “How can you say such a thing?”

“Mother doesn’t like driving in the rain,” my sister explained.

“I thought she didn’t like driving at night.”

“I don’t like either,” she said. “Go find your father. I hope he’s out of the pool by now and somewhere in the men’s locker room.”

I was shy about entering the locker room. It was filled with men who would be as critical of me as my father was. But when I opened the door, the first thing I saw was one completely naked with ample pink flesh and a big cock approaching erection. The second thing I saw was his handsome face smiling at me.

“Get out of the rain,” he said, “or you’ll melt.”

He was rapture incarnate. I stood staring as long as he allowed because I dared not hope to know such joy again. Much later, after years of resentment, I realized with gratitude that, without a father to look for that day, it might have taken a lot longer to learn and revere who I am.